


Blank Mark

by SereneSorrow



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Pre-Relationship, UraIchi Week 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:55:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24440035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SereneSorrow/pseuds/SereneSorrow
Summary: There's something missing, and it doesn't take a minute for Ichigo to realize what that something is.
Relationships: Kurosaki Ichigo & Urahara Kisuke, Kurosaki Ichigo/Urahara Kisuke
Comments: 7
Kudos: 188
Collections: UraIchi Week 2020





	Blank Mark

**Author's Note:**

> UraIchi Week 2020 - Day 5: Soulmates AU

After climbing out of the Shattered Shaft and killing Hat-n-Clogs' hat Ichigo had been so exhausted that he had gone to sleep, practically passed out, in the guest room that Hat-n-Clogs had offered to him. Now that he was awake though he had set about changing his clothes and getting ready for the day when he had noticed something.

Sitting on the edge of the borrowed futon Ichigo found himself staring down at his bare forearm, bare of sleeve, armband and anything else. He was confused, and his stare was blank and heavy, his heartbeat thudding louder and louder the longer he looked.

It was gone.

The blue stripe that circled his forearm and was spiked with twenty red slashes on the elbow side and twenty white slashes on the wrist side, it wasn't there anymore.

His soulmark was gone.

His mind was completely empty of thought, he didn't understand and couldn't process what had happened or what this meant. Ichigo had noticed at one point that when Rukia knocked him out of his body he didn't have his soulmark on his 'spirit' body, but he hadn't known how to ask her about it to find out why the mark wasn't there. At the same time it was still on his living body, even though he wasn't in it, in fact it was even still there when Kon was in his body. When he had asked the mod soul, Kon had said that he couldn't see it, but Ichigo could see the mark plainly at the time.

Soulmarks didn't just vanish. Only you and your soulmate could see the matching marks, and they were always there, even after one of the partners died. A mark wouldn't just go away.

So much had been happening to him recently though, he didn't even know what he was anymore, alive or dead-

The thought stopped him cold. As a soul he didn't have a soulmark, and now his soulmark was gone.

_'Am I dead?'_ He asked himself faintly.

How, and why would he be dead now, unless...

Springing to his feet immediately Ichigo slammed the door open and raced out of the room, running until he found Urahara sitting at the low table and drinking tea. The man looked up at him in surprise at his hurry but Ichigo ignored his question, too focused on his own.

“What did you do to me?” Ichigo demanded, slamming his now bare arm against the table next to the shopkeeper's teacup.

“I'm sorry? I'm afraid I don't know what you're referring to Kurosaki-san, can you be more specific?” The man asked, his shadowed eyes meeting Ichigo's under a hat identical to the one Ichigo had destroyed the day before.

“My soulmark is gone! What did you do to me?” Ichigo shouted, his arm was starting to shake, panic sweeping through him.

_'What have I done?'_ Ichigo asked himself. Everything that had been happening lately, all of this strange new ghost stuff that he had gotten involved in, he was barely treading water. He never knew what he was missing from one moment to the next, if he had somehow done this to himself... He didn't know what he would do.

***

“Soulmark?” Kisuke asked quietly, eyes widening a fraction.

Kisuke knew about soulmates of course, he had lived in the Transient World for a century now and had seen more and more couples discussing the marks as the times changed. He had even noted the social evolution of the phenomenon and when it came into fashion for marriages to be made based on the matching marks.

It was never something he had focused much of his energies on however, it was a Transient World thing, whole souls in Soul Society didn't have any such thing. They paired up by choice and often broke partnerships and subsequently made new ones. Soulmarks were a frivolous curiosity that he hadn't paid attention too after his young weapon had been crafted, he was too focused on ensuring that nothing went wrong with the boy's development.

Keeping his living body from being crushed under the weight of his own energy before he was old enough to have the stamina and reach for battle had taken frequent adjustment to the kidō layered over and within his body when the boy slept, and ensuring that the boy wasn't eaten by any hollows was a full time job that kept him as busy as the patrolling soul reapers assigned to this district. Whether or not the boy had a soulmark wasn't a question that he had ever contemplated, it simply hadn't occurred to him.

He hadn't taken it into account when crafting Ichigo's gigai, Kisuke realized at once. Of course he wouldn't have been able to see Ichigo's soulmark, only the other of the pair would be able to. There was no way that he could have duplicated such a thing, and his deception (to make Ichigo believe that he was still alive after his soul chain was cut in order to toss him into the Shattered Shaft) was instantly seen through.

Kisuke wanted to adjust his hat, to tilt it low over his eyes and hide from the boy, hoping that if their eyes didn't meet then Kurosaki-san wouldn't be able to see him. That he could continue on this path without Kurosaki-san knowing how far he was willing to go. He couldn't do that though, he truly hadn't even known how far he had gone, and this last blow to his conscience screamed at him.

“An oversight.” Kisuke said plainly, still meeting Kurosaki-san's eyes, his voice suddenly rough in his dry throat. “Truthfully, I had forgotten all about that Transient World phenomenon, and didn't think of how I would include it in your gigai.” He admitted to the shaking boy.

The words were clearly felt like a blow, and Kurosaki-san fell back from him, bumping into the table and leaning back against it because otherwise he would have slid to the floor. His eyes were wide and lost as he stared back at Kisuke, too shocked to speak.

“Am I dead?” He finally asked, after the silence had stretched far too long.

Kisuke could only find it in himself to be honest now, he had gone too far and planned to use the boy for too long, to do otherwise. “Yes.” He answered simply.

***

“You can't fix it can you? You can't bring it back?” Ichigo asked, no longer looking into the man's eyes, instead staring down at the green coat that the man wore.

“No.” Was the only answer.

Ichigo wanted to believe that the man sounded regretful, he didn't know why, but he did. He was crying, it would have been embarrassing if he could care about anything else right now, but he supposed that he'd always been a romantic underneath it all. Ichigo had looked forward to meeting his soulmate, and even though he never really paid attention when his friends would wonder about their soulmates and never spoke up when they would compare ideas about how they would meet, he had still let his mind wander along those same lines.

He wouldn't ever meet them now.

“I-” Urahara's voice was faint, and he barely heard it. “I'm sorry, Kurosaki-san.”

It just made him cry harder, the truly sincere apology making it impossible for Ichigo to hate the man. He had suspected before now that Urahara-san was connected to Soul Society, he supposed that this was the proof if the man hadn't remembered that living people had soulmates. Ichigo supposed that this meant that soul reapers _didn't_ have them, so of course he wouldn't have thought of it. He couldn't even be angry with Urahara-san now though, because Ichigo _needed_ to rescue Rukia, he was honor bound to after everything that she had done for him. If he had known ahead of time that Urahara-san was going to have to kill him to give him his powers back and that it would mean losing his soulmark, he would have hesitated, and mourned. He would have gone through with it though, if there was no other way, because he had to honor his debt.

He didn't know when it happened, or how, but his face was buried in Urahara-san's shoulder as his tears soaked the man's coat. Urahara-san's arms wound up wrapped tightly around him, and the soft, warm weight of them surrounding him was comforting. Somehow he drifted into sleep against the man, somehow he felt safe, somehow he thought that eventually it would be okay.

***

Kisuke had no idea what to do when Kurosaki-san leaned into him, tears pouring from his eyes and sobbing like the child that Kisuke had never allowed himself to see when he looked at the boy. He shoved down his own discomfited feelings at the proximity and touch as well as the boy's distress and raised his arms, hesitating a moment in his confusion and then wrapping them around Kurosaki-san's back. He waited like that for a while as Kurosaki-san kept crying, until the boy quieted down and then went still.

Asleep, Kisuke determined after a while of silence, the warm weight of the boy's body against his chest reminded him of when he had carried Jinta after the boy had broken his leg. Something young and weak was in need of his help, it wasn't the sort of thing he had ever been trained for.

Carefully, Kisuke carried the boy back to the spare bedroom and tucked him back into the futon that he had only just emerged from. The boy's hair was a mess so he carded his fingers through it to try to straighten it out, and then Kisuke dried what was left of Kurosaki-san's tears with his own sleeve. They would talk more when the boy awoke again.

Kisuke would be here.

For him.

**Author's Note:**

> Ichigo's soulmate isn't any of the canon characters, it's just some mysterious person he hasn't met, out there in the world somewhere, just in case anyone wanted to know.


End file.
